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Free smartphones, campground delivery among pizza promos for Independence Day

Pizza brand marketers, Start your engines! The Independence Day weekend beckons with lots of opportunities to attract new and returning customers in for orders. Clearly, many brands have pulled out all the wheel chocks to respond with creative, fun and kind initiatives.

In fact, some of the campaigns crossing the news desk at Pizza Marketplace have captured some press already, including the offbeat promo we told you about here yesterday from Villa Italian Kitchen,offering a $10,000 pizza-kinicustom-made to order. Here are three others that caught our eye for their unusual approach to the annual holiday weekend.

Donato's smartphone giveaway: How to make new customers extremely loyal very fast

The QSR delivery-based chain wants a flood of downloads of its news Android loyalty app, so it's giving customers a relatively easy way to get a free smartphone loaded with a loyalty app download link just for ordering a pizza at the chain before Aug. 27.

This campaign took some doing and well-thought-out procedures to put in place and make compliant as well as effective. In it, any customer who places an order for any sized pie, gets a coupon code redeemable for a free Android smartphone at www.Donatos.com/Android.

Customers who redeem that offer and pay $50 a month for two months receive unlimited talk and text. Upon receipt and activation of their Android phone (brand undisclosed) the customer gets a one-time text with a link to download Donatos new Android app, as well.

"The Android app paired with the smartphone offer is a natural progression of our passion for making customers' lives a bit easier, and delicious. We want to meet them where they're at, and right now, that's on smartphones," Donatos CEO Tom Krouse said in a release, following his chain's release of the often easier-to-obtain IOS app for iphones earlier this year.

"We received an overwhelmingly positive response to the convenience and efficiency provided through the new Apple app, which launched earlier this year, and we're thrilled to offer that same seamless experience to Android users, along with a free smartphone to sweeten the deal."

If the customer can't come to you, you go to the customer's campsite?

Meanwhile at Cottage Inn, they've opened a whole new pizza delivery category: Auto racing campground delivery. Specifically, the brand said it will now deliver its pies and other offerings straight to your campground at Michigan International Speedway's Nascar weekends.

"We're doing cool things that have never been done in NASCAR," Speedway President Roger Curtis said in the release. "Cottage Inn is not only going to bake fresh pizzas for our fans in the New Holland Fan Plaza on race weekends as a restaurant, but also for our campers as part of a pizza delivery service. This is a first for sports."

This applies to every campground on the track's property. Mind you, this is one of the biggest Nascar camping properties in existence, with space for 9,000 units. That means 9,000 campers-full of rowdy Nascar partiers who are now able to order fresh pizza to their camps between 5 p.m. and midnight from Thursday to Sunday. In other words, a whole lot of "happy campers."

To handle the pie-order proliferation sure to hit the brand, Cottage Inn leaders said they'll have five ovens on site working to crank out and deliver pies to specially marked tents near the security guard shack in every campground.

"This is a tremendous opportunity for us," Cottage Inn CEO George Michos said in the release. "We are in growth-mode here in Southeastern Michigan. We have over 50 stores system-wide. We want to grow and we have the systems in place to do that. And the exposure here and the opportunity to brand here at Michigan International Speedway with all the great NASCAR fans is an unbelievable opportunity for us."

Pizza chain gives animals an "independence day"

Though there will be tons of meat tossed on grills this weekend, veggie lovers are getting a pretty cool new option just in time for the party weekend. Coal Fire pizza, has fired up a vegan cheese pie after meeting with an animal advocacy organization called Vegan Outreach.

The vegan pizza with a gluten-free uses Daiya cheese and any of an endless assortment of plant-based life on top. Vegans do not use or eat any animal-derived products, including milk and eggs, so a good cheesy pizza is quite often a challenge for them.

But the new vegan option is now available for a kind of Independence Day for Animals celebration at all eight Coal Fire locations, the news release said.

"Coal Fire makes it a priority to have different options for all types of food lovers," Coal Fire Marketing Director Lindsay King said in the Vegan Outreach release. "We pride ourselves on now offering Daiya cheese and hope that our vegan clients are pleased with the new option on our menu."

Somewhere out in the pastures of America, a happy cow and chicken are setting off a few sparklers.

Award-winning veteran print and broadcast journalist, Shelly Whitehead, has spent most of the last 30 years reporting for TV and newspapers, including the former Kentucky and Cincinnati Post and a number of network news affiliates nationally. She brings her cumulative experience as a multimedia storyteller and video producer to the web-based pages of Pizzamarketplace.com and QSRweb.com after a lifelong “love affair” with reporting the stories behind the businesses that make our world go ‘round. Ms. Whitehead is driven to find and share news of the many professional passions people take to work with them every day in the pizza and quick-service restaurant industry. She is particularly interested in the growing role of sustainable agriculture and nutrition in food service worldwide and is always ready to move on great story ideas and news tips.